


Keepsake

by NortheasternWind



Series: Long Was the Way [2]
Category: Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Fix-It, Friendship, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-17
Updated: 2017-10-17
Packaged: 2019-01-18 12:16:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 931
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12387912
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NortheasternWind/pseuds/NortheasternWind
Summary: Talion happily allowed Celebrimbor to reforge Urfael. But Acharn is different.





	Keepsake

“No.”

Talion could almost feel Celebrimbor’s irritation. “ _And why not?_ ”

“Is it not obvious?” Talion said. “Urfael has always been mine. But this blade once belonged to my son.”

“ _That will not change if I reforge it._ ”

Talion groaned. Celebrimbor had said there was power in legends, and more so if the legend of a weapon was inscribed upon its blade. And, after all, a weapon was a tool, so he had happily surrendered Urfael to be reforged by the greatest smith of the Second Age. What did he have to lose?

Acharn was different. Broken on that fateful night. The blade of his son. He would have carried it as a Ranger one day if he had lived.

“Can you truly not understand?” he asked. “This is more than a weapon. It’s a symbol, a memento! I look at this blade and remember the moment it shattered with perfect clarity.”

As though blown in by the wind Celebrimbor appeared in the air before him, with the unnatural light of the Ring in his eye and a scowl on his brow. “ _Is your memory so poor that you would forget everything, were I to simply change its shape?_ ”

For a moment Talion could not speak through his anger, but when his answer did come it surprised even him.

“Yes! How easy it is, to forget what you seek vengeance for!” And then, at the incredulous look on his companion’s face: “Wouldn’t you know? Have you not forgotten also?”

Such was Celebrimbor’s outrage that he could only manage a strangled “ _What?!_ ”

“You’d forgotten everything!” Talion said, thinking that the wraith’s ‘amnesia’ had been faked to earn sympathy, but beyond caring. Celebrimbor  _had_  forgotten, as far as Talion was concerned. “Your family, your kingdom! What did those artifacts mean to you but more power?”

“ _How dare you!_   _You have no idea what I lost! What I endured–_ ”

“Don’t I?! I saw the visions, same as you! You looked so happy in your forge. But where I have regaled you with tales of my son and wife, you have not once spoken of your own family since we met.”

Celebrimbor stepped in close, eyes gleaming with rage. “ _If I choose to keep my memories for myself, then that is my business, and none of yours!_ ”

“Just admit it! I didn’t see your daughter die. Do you even remember?”

Celebrimbor snarled, and his hand shot out like an arrow from his bow–but though it phased harmlessly through its intended target, Talion felt pain blossom in his throat and blood rise into his mouth. His old wound, his first death by the Black Hand, undone only by the will of an angry elven wraith.

He gasped. By now he knew very well what it felt like to have your throat slit, but pain was still pain, and his vision failed as he tried desperately to keep it out, tried to get away from it, clawed frantically at his throat to keep the blood and the air in and he was being  _murdered_  again and no, no,  _no_ –

And then the wound vanished under his fingers, and he inhaled his own blood in his haste and relief.

“ _Forgive me_ ,” Celebrimbor said, from somewhere far above him. Talion’s vision had not yet cleared enough to look at him, but he sounded sorry.

They stood there a while– or, Celebrimbor stood, as Talion had fallen to his knees at some point– in silence, Talion taking short gulps of air between wet, full-bodied coughs. In his panic he’d dropped the dagger that had started this argument in the first place, and as his vision returned he saw it on the ground nearby, reflecting the light given off by his companion.

With a trembling hand Talion reached into his bag and drew from it that first relic, the pendant once worn by Celebrimbor’s daughter. The stone in the middle was cracked, and the metal bent concave– where, Talion realized, Sauron’s mace had struck.

“Would you fix it, if you could?”

Celebrimbor did not answer. Talion looked up, and saw that terrible light flickering in his eyes.

Finally, he bent his knee and knelt to look Talion in the face. “ _I am bound here against my will._ ”

Talion blinked. The wraith had suggested before that they go off to their respective fates. Another lie, then, but the first one the elf had admitted to on his own.

“ _There is no white shore waiting for me, whether I will it or not_ ,” he continued. “ _But though I have offered you eternal rest, you have chosen instead to remain here, and fight. And you cannot do so if you continue to cling to ghosts._ ”

Talion reached out and picked up Acharn, drawing it close. Celebrimbor’s gaze followed him.

“ _You have no need of a broken memento_ ,” he said quietly, “ _not when you can leave and see your son again at any time._ ”

Talion closed his eyes, turning the blade over in his hands.  _Dirhael_. The Black Hand had stepped between them at the last moment, denying them the comfort of each other’s faces as his son died.

“Fine,” he said, speaking through a lump in his throat. “I accept your reasoning. But–”

He held the dagger up to his friend’s nose, though a wraith had nothing to fear from the jagged edge. “When you are done, Acharn had better be the best damn knife Middle-earth has ever seen.”

“ _It will be!_ ” Celebrimbor said fiercely, and from the absence of the light in his eyes Talion knew he was telling the truth. “ _I swear._ ”


End file.
